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<p>Any unexpected or unintended incident which could have or did lead to harm to one
or more patients can be recorded on the Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service,
to support local and national learning. This can include surgical fires or burns.
We are informed that NHS England does not define the severity of harm related to surgical
fires or burns specifically. Grading the severity of harm related to a patient safety
incident that is recorded on LFPSE, should be done using NHS England’s guidance on
recording patient safety events and levels of harm, which asks that near miss events
be graded as no harm. The guidance is available at the following link:</p><p> </p><p><a
href="https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/policy-guidance-on-recording-patient-safety-events-and-levels-of-harm/"
target="_blank">https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/policy-guidance-on-recording-patient-safety-events-and-levels-of-harm/</a></p><p>
</p><p>If a surgical fire or burn is assessed locally and constitutes a patient safety
event, it would fall under the scope of the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) Regulations
16 or 18, and must be reported to the CQC. This means that the most serious surgical
fires or burns which result in serious harm or the death of a service user, are subject
to mandatory reporting. NHS trusts can comply with this requirement by recording patient
safety events using the LFPSE service, and NHS England shares all such data with the
CQC, who are responsible for regulating compliance with CQC regulations. CQC Regulations
16 and 18 are available respectively, at the following links:</p><p> </p><p><a href="https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-providers/regulations/regulation-16-notification-death-service-user"
target="_blank">https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-providers/regulations/regulation-16-notification-death-service-user</a></p><p>
</p><p><a href="https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-providers/regulations-enforcement/regulation-18-notification-other-incidents"
target="_blank">https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-providers/regulations-enforcement/regulation-18-notification-other-incidents</a></p><p>
</p><p>Although the recording of wider patient safety events onto LFPSE is a voluntary
process, providers are encouraged to record all patient safety incidents, irrespective
of the level of harm, to support local and national learning.</p><p> </p><p>The LFPSE
service and its predecessor, the National Reporting and Learning System, do not have
specific categories for surgical fires or burns. Determining how many patient safety
events related to surgical fires or burns were recorded by National Health Service
providers in each of the last five years would require a search of the free text of
recorded patient safety events, using key words, and a subsequent expert clinical
review of all potential records to determine relevance to the question. This could
only be provided at disproportionate cost.</p>
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